The Rare Coin Score p-9

by Richard Stark

  “Been a few years,” Mainzer said. He looked as though he should be speaking with an accent, but he was native-born and the only trace in his speech was a touch of Boston.

  “We’re all here,” Parker said. “Come on over. Lempke tell you the situation?”

  “Coins. We got a tame dealer.”

  “Right.”

  Mainzer nodded his head at Claire. “Lempke didn’t say anything about that.”

  “Why should he?”

  Mainzer looked at him in surprise, and then laughed. “Still the same,” he said. “The same bloodless bastard you always were. What about her? She belong to anybody?”

  “Me.”

  “Come off it, Parker.”

  Parker shrugged, and walked off toward the other end of the room. After a second Mainzer followed. Claire had already joined the group at the other end.

  Mainzer and Carlow knew each other, and Lempke made the necessary introductions to Billy and Claire. Then they all sat down, here and there around the living room, and Parker told them the setup.

  When he was done, Mainzer said, “What’s the shares?”

  Parker said, “Lebatard takes fifty per cent. The second fifty. We get ours out of the first stuff he sells.”

  “What happens to our half?”

  “We split it four ways. You, Carlow, Lempke, me.”

  “What about the little lady here?”

  “She gets hers out of Lebatard’s half.”

  Claire looked faintly amused at that, and Billy looked—for just a second—beside himself with pleasure.

  Mainzer glanced at Claire, then at Billy, then back at Parker. He grinned and shook his head. “Nothing stays simple,” he said. “Not even my old buddy Parker.”

  Carlow said, “What do we do afterward?”

  “Hole up at Lebatard’s. In the cellar for a day or two.”

  Billy said, “Why in the cellar? I have room upstairs, you can—”

  Parker said to him, “If I was a cop, and a coin convention was knocked over, I might come around to a local coin dealer for a little chat.”

  Billy looked startled. “You think they will?”

  Lempke said, “Billy, didn’t you already figure that?”

  “Why should they come to me?”

  Lempke said, “For background information, number one. And just in case you were in on it, number two.”

  Parker said, “You better think about it some, start getting used to the idea. So you don’t start signing confessions the minute they walk through the door.”

  Billy chewed his lower lip. He gave Claire a look of helplessness and fright, but she was facing the other way.

  Carlow said, “One problem.”

  Parker looked at him. “What’s that?”

  “This looks like a job we can’t case ahead of time.”

  “We look it over Friday night,” Parker said. “The Pinkerton people should use the same setup both nights.”

  “Doesn’t give us much time.”

  “It should be enough,” Parker said. “You want in?”

  Carlow drank beer, stalling a bit, and then said, “What I do, I bring the truck in place, I set it up, I front for it. You people bring the boodle down, we stow it, I drive away. There shouldn’t be any law on my tail, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I mean, I don’t outrace anybody.”

  “Not with the truck I got us, no.”

  Carlow nodded. “Good. I see law, I leave the truck and light a shuck on my feet.”

  “Naturally.”

  “Then I’m in,” Carlow said.

  “Good.” Parker turned to Mainzer. “What about you, Otto?”

  “I’m the mule,” Mainzer said. “I carry a ton of coins downstairs.”

  “Right.”

  Mainzer flexed an arm and looked at it. “I always get the brainwork,” he said.

  “I’ve got brainwork for you,” Parker told him.

  “What’s that?”

  “You in?”

  “Sure I’m in. I come here, didn’t I? I listened, didn’t I? I stayed here, didn’t I? What’s the brainwork?”

  Parker said, “We’ve got to go through the Diablo Tours wall tomorrow night.”

  Lempke said, “Why so early?”

  “By Thursday they’ll be setting up for the convention.

  Tomorrow night’s the last time we get the ballroom to ourselves.”

  Lempke said, “But what about the woman at Diablo Tours? She’ll see the hole.”

  “That was the hang-up,” said Parker. “But then I remembered about Otto here. He’s got a specialty.”

  Lempke said, “You want to burn the building down?”

  Parker turned to Mainzer. “I want a fire in their office. Tonight. It ought to do enough damage so they have to close shop for a few days. It ought to do a lot of damage to the inner office and especially around the rear wall. But it shouldn’t be arson.”

  Mainzer grinned. “Short circuit,” he said. “Faulty wiring. Easiest thing in the world. But that’s extra, Parker.”

  Parker held on for a second, not wanting to say anything to drive Mainzer away, because regardless of his personality he was a good addition to the string. Then he said, “We’ll all be doing extras, Otto. It’ll even out.”

  Mainzer scratched his bald-looking head. “I don’t know, Parker,” he said. “That sort of thing, fires and all, that’s mostly private with me. I mean, you want me in the string for strong-arm, right? A mule, that’s my specialty. Now, this other stuff—”

  Parker said, “You don’t have to stick around, Otto.”

  Mainzer looked surprised, then grinned again and shook his head. “It’s late in the season to replace me,” he said.

  “Then I’ll have to get on the phone right now,” Parker said, and got to his feet.

  Mainzer frowned, sitting forward. “You wouldn’t really do that,” he said.

  Parker stood by his chair, half-turned away, looking back and down at Mainzer. He was running a bluff, and they both knew it, but he was prepared to have the bluff called and to start looking for a replacement right now, and they both had to know that, too. It was a bluff with teeth in it. He said, “Make up your mind, Otto. Are you in or out?”

  Mainzer studied Parker’s face, and began to crack his knuckles one by one, starting with the thumb on his left hand and continuing all the way through to the little finger on his right. When he was all done he grinned, and shrugged, and looked around at the rest of them, saying, “What the hell. It’s a donation. For the cause.”

  Parker said, “Good.” Still standing, he turned and said, “What about you, Lempke? Still in?”

  Lempke looked surprised, then apprehensive, then determined. “Still in,” he said.

  “All right. Otto sets the fire tonight. Tomorrow night, Otto, Mike, Lempke and I go in and make the hole. Claire, you go to the hotel tomorrow afternoon, take a room for one night on a low floor, the lowest you can get. Lempke and Mike case the layout Friday night. Billy, you check out all the dealers Friday, be ready to give us a map Friday night showing the locations of the tables we want to hit.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Billy. “I can do that.”

  “We meet here tomorrow night at two, all except Billy.” Parker looked around. “Anything else?”

  There was nothing else, and they all relaxed. Carlow went to the kitchen for more beer, and Mainzer told a dirty joke, telling it to the group but mostly to Claire, who ignored him. Lempke and Carlow got into reminiscences about mutual friends.

  Lempke and Carlow were the first to leave, followed shortly by Mainzer, who had given up on Claire and was now pretending she didn’t exist. Billy hung around a while longer, until Claire told him she was tired and going to bed and he had to leave. He went reluctantly, but quietly. . When they were alone, Claire said to Parker, “That man Carlow seems all right. Very professional and competent.”

  “He knows his business.”

  “I don’t know about the othe
r one,” she said.

  “I do,” Parker said. “Otto knows his business, too. He’ll do what he’s here for.”

  “What about Billy?” she said. “Are you sure it’s safe to stay at his place afterwards? What if the police come and he loses his nerve?”

  “He’ll keep his nerve better knowing I’m a wall away.”

  “If you say so,” she said, and shrugged, and changed the subject.

  Much later, in bed, they heard a distant wail of sirens. Claire shifted position in the dark and whispered, “Is that Mister Mainzer’s fire?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose so.”

  Parker lay on his back and listened to the sound, and then to the following silence. For the thousandth time, he found himself wishing the other members of a string could leave their personalities at home when they came to a job, but of course practically nobody ever could. Otto would do his work well, and had undoubtedly done the fire well, but between now and Saturday night Otto could be guaranteed to rub everybody else the wrong way at least once each. But the only thing to do was try to ignore him, concentrate instead on the job.

  Claire moved again, and put one arm across his chest. He shifted closer to her, and shut his eyes, and after a while stopped listening to the post-siren silence and went to sleep.

  Eight

  IT HAD been a good fire, just exactly right. The outer office of Diablo Tours was smoke-streaked and waterlogged, the inner office was badly charred and burnt. The desk in there was a blackened shell, and the rear wall had been badly damaged by the fire. No one would be working here for a while, not until the place was redone, which wouldn’t start happening until after the insurance adjusters and fire department investigators were through, which was unlikely to take less than a week.

  Parker and Carlow and Mainzer arrived a little after two in the morning. The door had been locked and a piece of plywood nailed over the hole in it where the firemen had knocked out the frosted glass panel, but the lock was an easy one and they went through it practically without stopping. Parker had previously worked out the best route in here, trying it by day, going through the hotel, up to the roof and through a corridor window into this building, which was several stories taller than the hotel. From there it was simple to come down the stairs and through the locked door into the wreckage of Diablo Tours, which smelled inside of dampness and charred wood.

  When they entered the inner office, Mainzer looked around and smiled in satisfaction, saying, “Nice job. Admit it, Parker, it’s a nice job.”

  “You did fine,” Parker said, both because it was true and because there was the necessity to keep Mainzer happy. There was always the necessity to keep people happy, that was why Parker seldom got along with people away from work. When a job was at stake he was willing to make the effort, but otherwise he wasn’t.

  They couldn’t use any light of their own in here, not even a flashlight, but the same streetlight that illuminated the ballroom in the hotel next door also shone in the window here, its bluish-white light softening the effects of the fire, making the room like a small stage setting before a performance.

  The wall was plasterboard, and the fire had exposed some of the lines of separation between the panels. Parker went to the corner of the wall farthest from the window and felt along the edge of the panel there. “This will do,” he said.

  Car low had brought along a small toolkit, which he now put on the desk. They got screwdrivers and pliers from it and went to work on the plasterboard panel, removing all the nails holding it to the supports, not worrying about gouging the wall. While Carlow worked on the left side and Parker on the right, Mainzer removed the molding from the bottom of the panel and then stood on a chair to remove a narrow strip of wood where the wall met the ceiling.

  It took fifteen minutes to completely free the panel, which was four feet wide and ran from floor to ceiling. When they were done, they leaned the panel forward slightly and slid it to one side, then rested it back against the wall beside the new hole.

  Inside, there were two-by-fours in a vertical-horizontal network, plus electric cables, and backed by a wall of concrete block. While Mainzer went to work with a small saw, removing some of the two-by-fours, Parker and Carlow began chipping away at the cement between the concrete blocks.

  This part took longer, but by three-thirty they had pulled out eleven blocks, leaving a hole five feet high and about two feet wide, unobstructed by either two-by-fours or electric cables. On the other side of the hole was a blank sheet of plywood.

  It was cumbersome to get at the plywood, but they managed at last to drill a series of holes in it and then to get to work on it with the saw, and in half an hour they had the plywood taken out in four pieces and were looking at a blank gray French door.

  This was one of the doors Parker had seen in the ballroom, behind the maroon plush curtain. Apparently, in the days before this building had been here, there had been some sort of balcony or terrace off the hotel’s ballroom, to which the French doors had led. When this building was erected the French doors were nailed shut on the inside, covered with sheets of plywood on the outside, and more or less forgotten.

  Parker reached in with a screwdriver handle and tapped the door twice. Lempke was supposed to be on the other side, was to have been in the ballroom since three o’clock—over an hour now—to let them know when it was safe to make the final breakthrough.

  Parker’s knock was almost immediately followed by three slow raps from the other side. That meant everything was safe. If other people had been around, or if for any reason Lempke had wanted them to wait, his answer would have been two fast taps.

  Mainzer did most of the last part. The door had been nailed into its frame, and Mainzer now had to pry it loose, while standing crouched half in and half out of a hole five feet high with jagged edges of plywood all around its perimeter. Nails came out slowly, reluctantly, with shrill squeals, as Mainzer forced the door away from its frame an inch at a time. Mainzer had to stop and rest twice, but after the second time the door suddenly gave all at once, fell away from the frame, and leaned sagging against the maroon curtain on the other side.

  Mainzer stepped back, grinning, pleased with himself; beads of perspiration on his forehead gleamed like quicksilver in the dim blue-white light. He made an after-you gesture at the hole, saying, “There you go, Parker.”

  Carlow said, “We did a little bit, too, Otto.”

  Mainzer turned to make a sharp answer, but Parker said, “Let’s see what it looks like on the other side.” He stepped between them, diverting them, and led the way through the hole, wrestling the door off to one side.

  The nearest break in the drapes was a few feet to the right, being held open by Lempke, who was just a dim small silhouette in the darkness. As Parker came through, Lempke whispered, “Christ, you made noise in there. I been hearing you half an hour.”

  “Anybody come by?”

  “No, but they could’ve.”

  Parker stepped out of the way, and Carlow came through, carrying a pair of pliers and a screwdriver. He said, “I left the kit “That’s good,” Parker said.

  Carlow had looked at Mainzer in disgust, but hadn’t said anything. Now he got to his feet and said, “I’ll go now. See you Saturday, Parker.”

  “Right.”

  After Carlow had left, Mainzer said, “What is he, Parker, do you know?”

  “What do you mean, what is he?”

  “What kind of name is Carlow? Is it Jewish?”

  Parker looked at him and didn’t say anything.

  Mainzer spread his hands. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “I’ll work with anybody. Just so they know their job, that’s all.”

  “That’s the way to be,” Parker said.

  “I was just wondering, that’s all.”

  “Wonder next week.”

  Mainzer laughed. “That’s what I’ll do,” he said. “See you Saturday.”

  “Right.”

  Mainzer left, and Parker waited
a few more minutes and then followed him. He went down the stairs, and stopped off at the mezzanine to open the ballroom door and take a look inside. It looked the same as before, with nothing to show it had been breached.

  PART THREE

  One

  TERRY ATKINS of Terry-Kerry Coin Company drove into Indianapolis from Chicago Thursday afternoon in his Pontiac station wagon and arrived at the Clayborn Hotel at about six-thirty. A short dark man of twenty-nine, he and his partner Kerry Christiansen had operated a dealership together for the last five years, clearing between eight and eleven thousand dollars a year apiece. Most of their business was mail order, supplemented almost every weekend by coin conventions such as this one, which they took turns attending.

  Crossing the lobby on his way to the desk, Atkins saw three other dealers he knew, got into a brief conversation, and arranged to meet them all in the bar a little later. He went on to the desk, picked up his key, and took the stairs up to the mezzanine to register for the convention at the table that had been set up there by the local coin club. He got his convention badge, attached it to his lapel, and went back downstairs to arrange for a bellboy to bring his things up from the car, now in the basement garage. He had one small suitcase with clothing and such in it, and two large heavy coin cases, the contents of which had a current market value of around thirty-five thousand dollars. These went directly to the Lake Room on the mezzanine, now being used as the security room, where a blue-uniformed Pinkerton guard gave him a claim check which he tucked away in his wallet. He then stopped off at the West Room, down the hall, looking for a friend of his who was in charge of a display of military scrip that would be shown here, but the friend wasn’t around so he went on up to his room, showered, changed, and went down to meet the other dealers in the bar.

  Thursday at these conventions was always slow and relaxed. The tables wouldn’t be set up until tomorrow, so there was very little business to be transacted, except in a desultory way among the dealers themselves. Mostly there was shop talk and drinking and intramural gossip. Atkins had dinner at a downtown restaurant with the other three dealers, made a tentative arrangement to sell one of them a pair of Mexican gold coins tomorrow, and bar-hopped around Indianapolis with them till midnight.